One Oblivion
by Servant of Fire
Summary: Tag to PacMan Fever Dean is watching Sam die for him. He may not be able to stop his nightmare from happening, but he can't let it go either. Sam always takes his sacrifices too far. And just then the elder brother realized. He may not get his perfect ending. Sam may not age with grace. He may not age at all... (Inspired by the song Oblivion by Bastille)


**Oblivion:**

 **Note: This story was based directly on the song Oblivion by Bastille, hence the name. Listen to the song on YouTube and this story will make more sense.**

Charlie had gone her own way. The silence left in her wake was unsettlingly loud. It was like sitting in the belly of church bells. Waiting for the song to echo through the drafty, sacred place.

Night pervaded the bunker. Sam and Dean had been sitting on a couch in their den, watching some obscure old action flick on a worn old TV. Sam, God love him, was fading away. For all his protests, oblivion was creeping nearer him by the day. The movie had failed to interest him in the least. He'd smiled, made himself present, just to reassure his brother he'd be fine. Then, he had drifted off to sleep somewhere in the middle of the beginning. He had slouched and slowly fallen into Dean's arms, completely oblivious to his childlike posture.

Dean, welcoming it now, gathered him up, legs folded on the couch. He balanced his head neatly on his shoulder and held him around his bowed shoulders. Losing all interest in the movie, he looked down at his brother.

He was a man. A giant, bearded, matured man. Dean knew that. Yet the ashes near his eyes and lips made him seem smaller, made of paper. And he would always be a child to Dean in some sense. In that, Sam would be immortal. Eternal. Regardless of curses and a Cage as far below Hell as Earth below Heaven.

Dean laid a hand on Sam 's long, messy hair. He was fast asleep. Almost at peace. Even though he-dare Dean even think it!

How could he ignore it now? He had seen Sam's comatose body in Charlie's nightmare.

Sam was dying.

Again. Oh, God...No other brothers could say that. No other big brothers had been forced to bury the kid brother over and over again in under a decade. God help him! There by the grace, he was going again.

Still, then, Dean had thought he'd known heartbreak. In the past, when their relationship was on the rocks because of Heaven and Hell's manipulation. When Sam was knifed in the back. When Hounds came from Hell to tear them apart. When Sam had been willingly overtaken by the Devil to save the world.

Dean thought he knew what imploding internally may be like. He'd known it before. It was what he felt like when Sam sacrificed his life for him.

Because, when Sam leaped into Lucifer's Cage, it had not been for the world. If that had been the case, he would have jumped when Dean was shouting at him to do it. No, Sam had propelled himself into Hell only so Lucifer would not kill Dean. The elder brother knew that all other good intentions and penance pleas were gone in the instance he'd said: _"It's going to be okay"._

Then, Dean imagined his insides felt the same as a star would during a supernova. Blown apart. It was too epic to totally wrap his mind around. His grief was so profound that his body was perpetually sore with it. His heart had twisted so badly that he'd been prescribed ultra-strength medication for heart disease. His head was numb then, even though he may have been dying from the pain of the sacrifice.

They hadn't even been spared for a decade. Not even a decade, before Sam took it further. These trials? He'd intervened. He'd taken on this mission so Dean could live. He'd known that Dean's wish to him at the end of this story meant suicide on the elder brother's part. And he'd not allowed it. He just couldn't stay safe, could he?

All too soon the elder brother realized something horrible. Something too cruel even for the hand life had dealt the Winchesters. Sam was going somewhere he couldn't follow. Into the oblivion of these trials. The sleeping man in his arms was not far from the comatose man hospitalized in Charlie's nightmare. Preserved only by machines, he was timeless. He wasn't getting old fat and bald like Dean had pictured. He was ashes and sickness. Frail like a child for all his stature and soldiering spirit.

Dean realized all too quickly that his wish was almost beyond hope. Sam may not age with grace. He may not age at all. This could be the end. If he finished this, it would be another Cage closing on the deep. Another nightmare come full circle.

Dean felt his throat close looking down at his brother who barely stirred or breathed. Dean studied the dishwater-colored weakness of Sam's face. He felt the perfect ending he'd dreamed of for his own life slipping from his hands along with Sam's hair that brushed between his fingers. He continued to run his fingers through it all the same. It slipped steadily like a sand glass' contents, counting down the hours they had left. Their life together. Coming to an end.

Dean had been coarse over time, failing to acknowledge Sam's virtues. Still, Sam had given up his every dream time and again to walk this road with him. Shattered was his wish for a life of safety. The hope of romance, and family, and careers, and adventures outside of this violent,guilty life.

Every time he'd been forced to decide he'd chosen his brother. Even when his choice had been made from the wrong place, he'd been fighting for him. He'd been following him since he could walk. Every time he died, his brother's welfare or even his name was the final word to leave his lips.

This time would be no different. Yet it may well be the last of last words. The last of last times.

 _Not tonight. Not leaving tonight. You're in my arms for a second, huh? That's where you stay. That's where you stay...Not gonna leave you._

Dean laid his face in Sam's hair, humming to him an obscure old rock tune that was meant to calm them both. There was no sorrow like this under the sky. Dean was being overwritten on the molecular level with the impact of this sacrifice. To say it hurt was like saying the end of worlds was devastating. It was an extreme understatement

 _But not tonight...I can't fix this but...I can be here. Just here. Just us...Right now. Before we slip into the bottomless hole that is our whacked out life, little brother. I can be here...I'm here. Not leaving you. Now or ever._

Neither of them may have Dean's perfect ending. Life wasn't about perfection. Dean realized if he couldn't have the thing that made up his last fantasy, he'd take the next best thing. He'd follow Sam into the blackness he was disappearing into.

A thunderstorm sang outside. Dean drifted off slowly, like smoke floating in reverse down a chimney, lighting at last in the room and stirring in the same air as Sam's hovering spirit. There they became one storm, harmonized with that drilling the ceiling. One life seeping from Sam's veins. One soul breaking behind Dean's ribs. And one oblivion...


End file.
